bush visits the burn ward

this photo says a lot...

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/071108/ids_photos_ts/r176736904.jpg

i wonder how the young corporal managed to remain civil, to the man (sic) who stole his face, his life, his youth. how did he resist, or did he feel at all, the urge to rip the smirking face off the man (sic) who started this war based on a pile of lies.

story

oh yes, and the unbearable irony of the "commander in chief" playing "shoot-em-up" war games on the computer, during his visit to the hospital.

pentagon justifies photo censorship

my comments inline

U.S. Military Defends Deleting AP Images from Afghanistan



Published: March 10, 2007 10:20 AM ET
ISLAMABAD The U.S. military asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists’ footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions.

Translation: Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes? We can't take that gamble!

The comments came March 9 in response to an Associated Press protest that a U.S. soldier had forced two freelance journalists working for the U.S.-based news agency to delete photos and video at the scene of violence March 4 in Barikaw, eastern Afghanistan. At least eight Afghans were killed and 34 wounded.

“Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document,” Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter March 9.

Translation: We screwed up, and we need to make sure the public never sees any evidence that might contradict our cover story.

He added that photographs or video taken by “untrained people” might “capture visual details that are not as they originally were.”

Translation: The untrained public cannot be expected to understand the facts and the truth.

The Associated Press disputed the assertions.

“That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras,” said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in New York. “AP’s journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene. In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted.”

Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on civilians in cars and on foot along at least a 6-mile stretch of road from Barikaw following the suicide attack against the Marine convoy. The U.S. military said insurgents also fired on American forces during the attack. One Marine was wounded.

A U.S. soldier deleted the AP journalists’ footage that showed a civilian four-wheel drive vehicle in which three Afghans were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide bombing. The journalists had met requests from the military to not move any closer to the bomb site.

Other Afghan journalists said the military also deleted their footage.

Petrenko said that if people who are not part of the investigation entered such a “secured area,” they could disturb evidence and other clues, “potentially fouling the conclusions of the investigation.”

Petrenko said that taking pictures could also misrepresent what had happened in the incident.

“When untrained people take photographs or video, there is a very real risk that the images or videography will capture visual details that are not as they originally were,” he said. “If such visual media are subsequently used as part of the public record to document an event like this, then public conclusions about such a serious event can be falsely made.”

The AP also raised concerns about the military’s efforts to restrict its coverage of the Feb. 15 crash of a U.S. helicopter in southern Zabul province in which eight soldiers were killed and 14 wounded. Two AP journalists and their vehicle were searched extensively in an effort to prevent footage of the wreckage getting out.

Petrenko justified that action on the grounds of “operational security” exercised when “equipment, aircraft or component parts are classified.”

He maintained that the U.S. military had no intention of curbing freedom of the press in Afghanistan.

“We are completely committed to a free and independent press, and we hope that we can help encourage this tradition in places where new and free governments are taking root,” Petrenko said.

“It so happens that on these two recent occasions, military operational or security requirements were compelling interests that overrode the otherwise protected rights of the press.”

Translation: We love a free press, as long as they only publish what we tell them to.

---

holocaust trustee blasts hebron settlers

this man told it like it is.

Israel's Holocaust trustee blasts Hebron settlers
By Dan Williams 12 minutes ago

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior official of Israel's central Holocaust memorial on Saturday assailed Jewish settlers who harass Palestinians in a tinderbox West Bank city, saying the abuse recalled the anti-Semitism of 1930s Europe.

The fierce attack by Yosef Lapid, chairman of Yad Vashem's advisory council, was prompted by Israeli television footage showing a Hebron settler woman hissing "whore" at a Palestinian neighbor and settler children lobbing rocks at Arab homes.

The spectacle stirred outrage in the Jewish state, where many view the settlers as opposing coexistence with a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who lost his father to the Nazi genocide, said in a weekly commentary on Israel Radio that the acts of some Hebron settlers reminded him of persecution endured by Jews in his native Yugoslavia on the eve of World War Two.

"It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," Lapid said, reiterating remarks made earlier this week in Israel's Maariv newspaper.

"I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?"

Hebron has been a frequent flashpoint of more than six years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Some 400 settlers live there, under heavy Israeli military guard, among 150,000 Palestinians.

"The man is obviously a very, very sick person, to compare the Jews in Hebron to barbarians and compare us to the Nazis," David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers in Hebron, said in response to Lapid.

Another community spokesman, Noam Arnon, played down the televised harassments as "fringe incidents," and told Israel Radio: "In six years, 37 Jews have been murdered in Hebron, and now they're preoccupied with curses?"

CRACKDOWN OR COMPLACENCY?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a cabinet-level probe last week into Palestinian allegations that abuse by Hebron settlers is commonplace and routinely ignored by Israel.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said he hoped for an Israeli crackdown against the settler "provocateurs," but Palestinian officials called for comprehensive action.

"If they are serious about coexistence, the Israelis must take practical steps on the hundreds of daily violations against Palestinians in the old city," Hebron Governor Arif Jabari said.

Jabari's apparent pessimism was shared by Lapid, a former Israeli justice minister.

"We Jewish citizens of Israel wave a reprimanding finger at most," he said. "Worse still, I tolerated this silently as justice minister too."

The World Court has branded the settlements illegal but many Jews claim a biblical birthright to the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, a move billed as breaking the diplomatic deadlock with the Palestinians.

The rise since of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group whose charter calls for the Jewish state's destruction, and a recent war against Hizbollah guerillas in Lebanon has hardened the resolve of Israeli rightists against ever leaving the West Bank.

Lapid said while there was no comparing the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died, with Palestinian suffering from Israel's policies, this did not mean Israelis could not be culpable.

"It is inconceivable for the memory of Auschwitz to warrant ignoring the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today toward Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved toward Jews," he said.

(Additional reporting by Haitham Tamimi in Hebron and Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem)

un demands israel stop settlements

nice. but isn't this the same thing they've been saying for 30 years, to no effect? Israel just keeps on building (stealing), no matter what they say or what anyone else says. while the world talks, Israel keeps building, stealing, and killing. and the US keeps supporting Israel.

UN demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlements
dpa German Press Agency
Published: Saturday December 16, 2006

New York- The United Nations has demanded that Israel immediately halt its controversial settlement policy, it was reported Saturday. "Settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (are) illegal and an obstacle to peace as well as economic and social development," a resolution passed by the UN General Assembly with 162 votes in favour late Friday in New York said.

Eight countries, including Israel and the United States, voted against the resolution, while 10 abstained.

the so-called tragedy of rumsfeld

the real tragedy here is not how history will judge the "legacy" of this overrated fool --- the real tragedy is the tens of thousands of lives taken, the families broken, the bodies shattered, the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, and the real opportunities for peace that were lost, because of his arrogance and his boss's inability to admit a mistake.

Rumsfeld career ending in ignominy in Iraq
...
He was the primary architect of the war plan," said military analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "He was no scapegoat. He deserves the blame he received."

he was not only the primary architect of the war plan, he was a primary cheerleader for the war before it started, and a primary force in keeping the military on its disastrous course long after it became obvious to everyone else that it was a disaster. how can any sane person look at this situation and see this as a "tragedy for Rumsfeld"? he didn't lose any children. he didn't lose any limbs. he's already obscenely rich, and he'll go back to a civilian life among the privileged and make even more money, surrounded by a bubble of admiring sycophants who'll fill his ears with praise for the rest of his years. some "tragedy". in my book he's about as "tragic" as Pol Pot. he deserves to be put on trial for war crimes.

lead found in schools' water

more proof you can't be too paranoid about lead.

Lead found in drinking water at 36 Seattle schools
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - Page updated at 01:34 PM
By Seattle Times staff

More than 300 school drinking fountains and sinks have been blocked from use after tests turned up elevated levels of lead, Seattle Public Schools officials announced this morning.

The tests were conducted last spring when arsenic was found in some fixtures, and the results were presented to a school district committee last week. A district news release did not identify precise amounts of lead but said it was higher than the district's standard of 10 parts per billion. The Environmental Protection Agency standard is 20 ppb.

Lead was found in water fixtures around the district in 2004, prompting officials to spend $13 million to replace pipes; about 1,000 new fixtures have been installed in schools.

The most recent results, however, show lead contamination in some newer schools that don't have lead pipes or fixtures and did not turn up high lead levels during the 2004 tests. Fountains where lead has been found will be taped off and signs placed nearby until more information on the test results can be determined.

school bus driver fired for flipping off chimpy

so, why hasn't dick cheney been fired for telling reporters to ``F*** off''? apparently, we demand a higher standard of conduct for bus drivers than for the man who's a heartbeat away from the presidency. i agree that a bus driver should not make obscene gestures like that. but firing seems too way too harsh a punishment. it's also completely unfair given the conduct of this administration, whose record has been an unbroken stream of ``f*** off''s to the working class over the past 6 years.


Bus Driver Flips Off Bush, Gets Fired
Seattle Woman Files Union Grievance To Regain Job As School Bus Driver

SEATTLE, Nov. 2, 2006 (CBS/AP)

(AP) A school bus driver fired after she reportedly made an obscene gesture at President Bush has filed a union grievance in an attempt to get her job back.

The 43-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was driving middle school children back to school after a zoo visit on June 16 when the president and Republican Rep. Dave Reichert drove slowly by in a motorcade.

From the bus, the children waved; with the windows down in their car, Bush and Reichert waved back.

That's when the driver gave the president the finger, according to Reichert and Issaquah superintendent Janet Barry.

"The congressman hadn't seen it, but the president turned to him and said, 'That one's not a fan,'" said Reichert spokeswoman Kimberly Cadena.

Reichert later called Barry to tell her about the incident, but the bus driver had already been fired. District officials learned about the incident after the driver boasted to colleagues about it, Cadena said.

District spokeswoman Sara Niegowski said the driver has filed a wrongful termination grievance through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union did not return calls seeking comment.

Niegowski said the firing was not politically motivated.

"The bus driver was not terminated for making an obscene gesture at the president. The bus driver was terminated for making an obscene gesture in view of the students," Niegowski said. "That's not the role modeling we need for our students."